I’m a firm believer in having more than you need of everything. Having extra has several advantages and is well worth considering as a strategy.
First of all, and importantly,
- You have what you need.
Secondly;
- You have some contingency in case your primary store is damaged, stolen or you made some miscalculations on stocking levels. You can top up your supplies.
- You have some spares for barter.
- You have some spares for distribution to your community
One other area well worth thinking about is with extra items you can set up a shop or industry which utilises the items. An example could be that with spare water filters you could treat water and sell it. This could suppliment your income and enable you to gain items that you do not have or now recognise you need.
Another area that is worth considering is that although you may not have a use for so many a community may have that need. For example you have have a very good stash of medical supplies and medical equipment that you may not even be able to use but your community may then come across a doctor who can make the most of the items. You could even set up your own surgery and hire the services of a doctor. Win, win. You earn some extra whilst the doctor who has no tools is employed in a key role.
Bearing this in mind I have several medical items I can’t even spell. Advanced medical books that use words I can’t pronounce and I keep adding to my medical items as I find items I like, including some obscure ones.
It isn’t just medical items though. Tools are always a good purchase especially if you can buy cheap items that do not need electricity. Just keep your eye out at garage sales.
Word of warning though. Only do this when you have your basics sorted out. Food and water, medical supplies, clothing and sundries for yourself must come first. You can’t eat a room full of medical equipment or a wood turning wheel.
Once you have your core supplies sorted out you should really look at what other items you can use and consider planning ahead for a rosier future.
I fail to see why you’d want to stock up on in my opinion unnecessary stuff such as medical books etc that you cant even understand.
I know a lot of preppers take it on themselves and think they’re going to be society’s saviour after an event and lead the stragglers to a rebirth of the old ways.
They collect electronics and stuff and plan on becoming leaders of the rabble that’s left, taking in waifs and strays because of human kindness, helping neighbors to pull through as well.
All very romanticized if you ask me.
Why the hell would we want this crap system to survive let alone come back?
Why would humans want this shit to start all over again?
Take the opportunity to start a new age, an age where we live once again with in harmony with the world and other creatures instead of being greedy, destructive, selfish apes, hell bent on destroying each other for some stupid reason.
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Whilst certain books and stuff may be advantageous after an event, there’s no way I’m going to take it upon myself to stock all manner of weird and wonderful stuff in the hope of helping some future society.
My aim is mine and my family’s survival, books will be useful for one thing after an event, thats lighting fires and wiping your ass.
How many doctors do you think will keep practicing medicine after an event when they’re not being paid?
Not many.
Surgery for example way way way down the road. like it was in the 17-18 hundreds it’ll be again.
Unless you plan on being like a book ark and keeping those books in safe temperature controlled conditions, for future generations to peruse, they’ll rot away long before they’re of any real use again.
A total breakdown of society will result in endless tribal and individual fighting, killing and struggling for survival.
The romanticized events where everybody clubs together singing kum by ya around a camp fire whilst splinting a strangers broken leg are fantasy.
The fantasy of strangers coming to your bol and being kind people of use to you are fallacy, you help one person just one, they go away tell somebody else… that person may not be nice, organize a raid then your dead, so’s your family.
If you want to survive look at how cruel humans are now, in places like Syria, Iraq, Iran etc…
without rule of law the violence, rape, death, torture, cruelty and destruction will be horrendous for years.
We need to address this as a survival group and address it now and make people aware of what may happen to them.
whilst this subject is extremely unsavory and unpalatable, we must not dismiss it no matter what, we must look at the possibilities, discuss them and prepare for them. Not brush it under the carpet with a “what you looking on the bad side for all the time”
This site as well as most of the other does not address the reality of life after a societal breakdown.
yet it is something we should do.
Look for yourselves at the world around you, take off the survivalist prepper rose coloured, “the world singing in harmony after an event” making a new society and address the cold hard reality of life without rule of law.
read B.P.’s bad man post, this is just what i’m talking about… more posts along these lines to make people aware.
well said, Prepper 1, you have said everything i would have said myself! i agree with every word, tell it like it is(or will be) and lets remove the rose tinted glasses.
I wouldn’t class myself as having rose tinted glasses. I have the medical books so we don’t have to wait a hundred years to advance to that level. We don’t have to return to as it is we can choose our own path and pick the good bits whilst leaving or changing the bad.
Besides the NHS and management itself what is wrong with modern medical techniques? Nothing, so lets keep the knowledge and advance from a better position. What is wrong with being able to grow food and have decent sanitation. It’s only our management that screws things up and they will be long gone. Sure, there will be fighting, rape, murder and theft but it will settle down as atrition kicks in. Then and only then can we start to rebuild our new society. What it will be like nobody really knows but it will be harsher.
I don’t see myself as a leader either. I do see myself in charge of my own destiny and I’m prepping to steer things in the right direction. I’ll be on my soapbox when people start talking about socialism but I’ll be helping when they look at putting in a community water filter.
Oh and when have I every brushed anything under the carpet. I like bringing out these scenarios so people can think. On the other hand I see a positive future for us, maybe not in the short term, but certainly longer term and if I didn’t what would I be prepping for. Survival is more than living. Our goldfish survives but I want more than that.
All though I see no sense in buying an electric grain grinder it could sure make my life easier now while there is still power to use it.
Why wouldn’t you want things that would make life less complicated later?
Yes, I see the tone of why would we want things like they were before, but let’s face it we ain’t exactly doing the cave man thing at this date. We can still go to the store, the doctor, and move about somewhat freely.
Why do you learn things now with the idea you are going to need it later. The particular thing that you think will be needed may be towards the end of the list.
No, we do not need to fill precious space with redundant matter unless it can be deemed useful.
Remember that Doctor likes to eat, he just might barter services for food and maybe stored equipment may help him. I would tend to go for non-electrical stuff. Hope he likes riding a horse to visit his patients and a chicken for his services.
Many of us will not live long enough to see this “rosier” future, it may take decades, it may take centuries, it may never happen at all, depending on the event and the severity of it. if we in this country for whatever reason have to be self sufficient( i.e. no imports…of anything) then the population will have to be reduced to about one twelth of what it is now, this will happen by starvation, disease and war,it will take some time, and its not going to be nice,its not going to be over quickly as some people think. any new “society” will be a very long time in the future.
Could I just say that it has taken this country a very long time to get where it is today in terms of our society and our ‘civilised’ way of life. It may not be perfect but it is a lot better than in other places around the globe – probably why so many people want to come here to start again. But this is way off topic although interesting.
Having more than you need is a strong position for the individual/family unit in the event of something going wrong. Handled correctly it can be of great benefit to more than just those who have it, provided that it is organised and handled correctly. That part is not easy.
I’m not having a personal snipe at S.D. here, I just ranted off because I sick of a lot of the u.k. based prepper sites wearing what I see as rose tinted glasses.
Mostly scenarios revolve around the farming of new crops or taking in strays, completely ignoring scenarios of the tough hard struggle first.
The u.s. ones are well aware of the fighting at first and its a current subject in the threads.
But the British…. seem to gloss over that part as quickly as possible, dangerous and possibly fatal if you ask me.
How about more scenarios ( for those who like doing them) with more of the wrol aspect to engage our members that may not be fully aware of what could happen.
Knowledge, Information, books, data are pricless sources of info that can be bartered just like any other commodity. Looking back through this thread the most ” Rose tinted ” view appears to actually come from prepper 1 whothen condemns anyone else for that point of view !!
P1 writes
“Why would humans want this shit to start all over again?
Take the opportunity to start a new age, an age where we live once again with in harmony with the world and other creatures instead of being greedy, destructive, selfish apes, hell bent on destroying each other for some stupid reason.”
Then writes
“I’m not having a personal snipe at S.D. here, I just ranted off because I sick of a lot of the u.k. based prepper sites wearing what I see as rose tinted glasses.”
Humans never lived in harmony in a utopian agrarian society, not one that was successful, thenearest would have been the ancient hunter gatherers and early farmers but even then their attrition rate was horrendous and most dies long before aged 40.
P1 says he sees no point in stocking up on books he does not understand !!! thats fine for his own stand point but the guy who comes along later looking for such knowledge MAY understand them.
Skean Dhudes level headed approach is in my opinion the most sensible, it is better to be in the posession of such knowledge and not needed it, than to not be in possession of that knowledge and be in desperate need of it.
The guy with the books on how to make alcohol, soap, gun powder, etc is indeed going to be fortunate.
I’m in full agreement with Prepper 1, why would anyone want to start the same s#ite all over again ?, look what a mess has been made of things up to now, what we need after TSHTF is a new way of living, not the same old, same old !
Because in human history it has seen its societies rise and fallen already on dozens of occassions, Roman, Greek, Chinese, Persian, British etc and they always go horribly wrong in time, you can reset the clock as often as you like but human nature will always follow the same path. The more civilised it gets the more decadent it gets, the more refined it becomes the more corrupt it becomes. There will never be the utopian dream come true because humas are imperfect. Theres two much wishful thinking and dreaming going on, never mind rose tinted glasses life is unfair, life is unequal, theres never going to be a fair way all we can do is survive.
BP,
Many of us won’t but I am looking beyond my life and to the lives of my kids and their kids. So yes. I may not see the rosier future but I am trying to improve the lives of my family as well as my own by prepping. That is why some of my preps include plans for me not being there.
Prepper1,
I may look like I’ve taken it personally with my response but I have not. We all must decide what we want to do to prep. You draw the line in the sand at a different palce to me. This site talks about many things that are not rosy and there will be more articles following on that. Life will not be easy.
I’ve also never said I want society to return to as it is now. As NR points out though all civilisations like our destruct after a while. It is now our turn.
Our history shows that after every fall there is a period of lawlessness. Then people start banding together and forming communities. The more information we have on the good aspects of our society the better and the more we have warning against socialism the longer it will take for us to reach the next peak.
Years ago I was hoping we would reached Mars and other planets. That growth would have taken people like us away from government and left us to do what we always wanted to do. The rest would have remained on earth to simply survive as we are now. We failed this time so maybe next peak if the fall is not too much.
i think as far as civilisations are concerned there is a saying which goes something like” those that forget(or ignore) history are destined to repeat it”! if we were to form a new civilisation would it be prudent to make sure we did not “repeat” the mistakes of the past but to take our new society in a different direction completely??
BP,
That makes sense but it is easier said than done. It starts with sensible steps and then slowly increases over time. baby steps and salami slices.
The American dream is a perfect example. Where it started and how it was brought to its knees by traitors and wimps.
yes, agreed. PEOPLE are the problem or to be precise POLITICIANS are the problem, we have seen that ourselves, since the war we have had more and more politico’s who are out for what they can get, wealth, power, influence anything BUT what is right for the country and the people. my hope is that when TSHTF our civilisation will be knocked back so far that it will be century’s into the future before we even have to think about this sort of thing again. from the dust of the event will arise communities/tribes who’s main reason for being is pure survival, it will be a long time before they even have surplus to trade, politics and nation states wont even be on the agenda for a VERY long time.
Humans are flawed, we distroy ourselves and each other! But isnt it better to try to do more then just survive! Yes shit will hit the fan sooner or later, look at the dark ages, so much was lost, so why not get books and things that will at least give us a chance for the future! As long as you have all the other things you need first!!! Its not rose tinted, its more optermistic that we will need that info in the future, rather then ‘hey screw it, let the other person do it’….. When your dieing from something that could have been in the books but you have forgoten then wouldnt you be happy that that guy saved it. Guys lets not make digs, we have enough trouble from those who dont understand preppers!
And the thing about British prep sites being rose tinted, read older posts and you will see alot is realistic, helpful and a way for us all to try to work on the same page, giving ideas that some wont have thought off! Sorry but American prep things seem to be arm yourself and fight the world so you keep your gear, it isnt so easy in UK. Laws are a bit harsher for the preper here, and also peoples mindsets are differant